Ralph’s Children Read Online Free PDF

right.
    ‘See if you can look at it as the best possible start for Sam,’ Pete said. ‘Nothing more than that, sweetheart.’
    ‘The best possible start for Sam, same as any baby,’ Laurie told them, ‘is with me, his
mother
.’
    At least that was what she had tried telling them, but there was something wrong with her; she felt too weak and drained, not up to competing on what felt more like a negotiation with people
vastly more experienced.
    And of course, they were right, weren’t they? He did deserve to have the best start available to him. And if all these people – mothers and fathers, grandparents, siblings, doctors,
psychologists and the rest who’d written those letters of praise – if
they
all felt that being in a place as fine as the Mann Home was more important for children like Sam than
being with their own mothers, then who was she to argue with them?
    There. She had already used one of their phrases. ‘Children like Sam.’
    No one else
like
Sam on earth. Unique as his DNA and fingerprints.
    Remember that, Laurie had told herself. Remember it for ever.
    If she forgot that, he was as good as lost.

Kate
    A fter Rob had left, Kate had stayed alone for a time, keeping away from her parents and the paper – telling her friend Abby, who’d been
coming to visit, that she and Rob both had flu – putting all her energies into what she was best at: researching what their child might face if one of the disorders thrown up speculatively by
the blood screening was confirmed by the next stage of testing.
    She could have gone to the hospital, spoken to specialists there, had a talk with Mary Kennet, their GP – and she knew, of course, that she might well have to do all that in time, but she
knew too that the only thing keeping her sane for now was the pretence that this research was work, was not about her and certainly not about her own unborn child.
    Except, of course, it
was
her baby, which meant that even if Rob had walked away, she was not alone because their child was growing inside her – and
there
was the
clincher, finally, for her. And she was almost certain that she would have arrived at the same decision even if Rob had not refused to talk things through, had not cut and run.
    Their child
was
growing inside her, and had a right to live.
    In sickness or in health.
    She had asked her parents, finally, if she could meet them together, deliver all the news to date in one hit, rather than having to endure two painful encounters.
    ‘And please,’ she had told Michael on the phone, ‘can we keep this to just us?’
    Meaning could he please not tell Delia.
    The new woman in his life. Delia Price, a website designer from Melbourne. A clever, attractive brunette, taller, younger and steelier than Bel – and, according to Kate’s besotted
dad, courageous into the bargain, bearing scars on her back from an old riding accident yet still getting back on horses at every opportunity.
    ‘Which pretty much sums Delia up,’ Michael had said a while ago.
    Kate had never quite managed to get past her dislike of Delia, who was always charming to her when Michael was around, but cool if they were alone. Not to mention the way she had of trying to
score points with Rob, inviting him to go with her on Sunday morning horse rides, knowing Kate wouldn’t come because she’d been badly thrown as a child and had been nervous of horses
ever since.
    ‘If she had any sensitivity,’ Kate had told Rob, ‘she wouldn’t rub my nose in it.’
    ‘But she isn’t asking you to ride,’ Rob had pointed out.
    ‘Quite,’ Kate had said, knowing she was being unreasonable, but Delia had made her hackles rise from the first.
    She certainly wasn’t about to share this most private, sensitive matter with her.
    ‘I’m not keen on keeping secrets from Delia,’ Michael said.
    ‘Fair enough,’ Kate agreed. ‘Except then I won’t be able to tell you what’s happening to me, and I really could use your support,